AppZen Branding & Site Design
Role: Project Lead, design director
Responsibilities: creative direction, brand strategy, copywriting, executive presentations, user interviews, client management
“How do we make an expense report auditing brand exude as much cutting edge coolness as the AI and machine learning tech they use to change the industry?
Oh, and how do we do it in 12 weeks?”
AppZen currently specialize in single product Artificial Intelligence auditing of expense reports with real benefits to clients and their clients' employees. As a “start-up that’s growing up” and doing so quickly, going from 20 to 1000 clients along with the talent demands that follow, they are moving from their current single product offering to a platform with modules or applications designed to enable strategic and nimble financial decision making for the back office of the future.
The Shift: What We Needed to Realize to Help Get Us There
From a company who uses fear-based language (“fraud”)
to a brand who communicates opportunities and benefits for all
From a company seen as having a single product offering aimed at “bean counters”
to a brand offering a nimble financial decision-making platform, a must have for the forward-thinking CFO and the back office team of the future.
From a company whose outside doesn’t match its inside
to a brand which is aspirational and dare to stand for something
From a company seen as transactional and one dimensional
to one that fosters long term relationships
From a company who speaks generically and inconsistently
to a brand who knows how to speak to all audiences in an authentic and empathetic way, and more importantly, when to be quiet and listen
Through workshops, adjacent industry research and customer interviews we unearthed key takeaways and areas of focus to help sharpen our work as we headed into logo development and conceptual designs.
(Click to enlarge areas of focus below)
Focus Areas for Brand Explorations
1. Paint a more vivid, powerful, and inclusive picture of AI
2. Own service leadership, and the community commitment at the heart of it all
3. Be bold. Be real. Be unbound.
Concept 1: welcome to our zen
Concept 2: Hello, human potential
Concept 2: finance favors the bold
While Concept 2, “Hello, Human Potential” was chosen as the direction best capturing this culture-rich, unique start-up, there were still logo revisions to hash out. After several rounds of ideation, we landed on three final recommendations with an accompanying origin story. “Totality” (shown first below) was unanimously selected.
(Click to enlarge logos and origin stories below)
With finalized logo and patterns we documented it all in our brand guidelines, moving into site design and component library.
“Since the site would be built by a 3rd party on Wordpress, we simplified our design as much as possible, finalizing 18 total components with variations to keep the site fresh.”
Component Guide
(Click to enlarge component guide below)
Sample Site Design:
Brand Guidelines:
How we solved it:
Digital Strategy
Stakeholder Interviews
Branding Workshops
Client Interviews
Content Strategy & Creation, Priority Guides
Visual Design
Information Architecture & XD
“Appzen has a simple, versatile, and comprehensive brand to build their future from, enabling them to own the amazing and unique company they truly are while going after c-suite audiences. ”